


power in this dead world to make it live

by ProfessorESP



Series: The Opposite of Amnesia [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: (chapters will be annotated!), Arthurian mythology - Freeform, Courtly Love, King Arthur AU, Other, POV Multiple, Reincarnation, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorESP/pseuds/ProfessorESP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lady of the Lake, in her immortal wisdom, decided that the Court of Camelot deserved a second chance at settling their differences and striving towards happiness.<br/>Hopefully they don't fuck it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. cast my shadow from a bellow's flame

**Author's Note:**

> -then might we live together as one life,  
> and, reigning with one will in everything,  
> have power on this dark land to lighten it,  
>  **and power on this dead world to make it live.**  
>  \--King Arthur, _Idylls of the King,_ Alfred Lord Tennyson

In a land far far away, there is a girl sitting in a tower, watching the world through poorly polished glass. She has never seen the world, the true world, and she never can. If she looks away then the secrets she has been given will fall one by one. She doesn’t know why, or what will happen if she does, but she has been told it would be terrible. She believes it.

_“Stop it. You’re gonna make me late. They’re waiting for me.”_

So she sits and chases the shadows in the glass. Men in armor run across it, bright and colorful like tourney shields. Sometimes when the wind picks up just right she can hear words and crackles of static drifting on the breeze.

_“Oh sorry, I'm just. I'm... tired. I'm really tired. Um, my name is uh... It's uh…”_

_“Your name is Alpha. You’re Church.”_

_“Right, Church. That’s me.”_

She does what she can with those little snippets of sound, clutching them close and weaving them into zeroes and ones. Her tapestry of stolen sound gets longer and longer, fringed with the stolen memories she can no longer hold isolated inside herself.

_“This is Freelancer Tex broadcasting on an open channel. You want me, O’Malley? Come and get me.”_

So her hoard of stolen thoughts and words grows longer and longer, and her secondhand mirror grows duller and duller. She cannot stop to clean it. She doesn’t know how. If she moves the dam will break and the secrets will spill forth, fanged and terrible.

_“Mayday, this is Agent Washington. I am a soldier. Is anyone out there? Can anyone hear me?”_

She no longer remembers why that is a bad thing.

* * *

Tex shoves herself out of the stasis pod, metal crumpling under her hands like paper. The fans in her chest whirr to life, kick starting her body’s cooling system. It’s nothing like breathing, and several lifetimes of muscle memories protest, trying to flex muscles her android body doesn’t have to try and fill her equally non-existent lungs.

She does the only thing she can think of. She dumps the memories. She doesn’t know where they’re going and doesn’t care, only that they’re out of her head and lessening the deep, pervasive wrongness working its way through her skin.

Still there are some left. At Tex’s prompting they separate easily into two, organizing themselves into neat folders in what passes for her brain. The first is smaller, and when Tex reaches out for it she finds a life she knows well, trapped inside with nothing but shadows cast in mirrors to content herself with. The seeping cold of river water and the strong smell of lilies was different, but not unfamiliar. Tex frowns and pushes them aside, reaching for the other set of memories.

No, not memories, she realizes. There are no sensory images here, no ghosting touches and cherishes sights. They’re data logs. Tex runs them as she finds them, in reverse chronological order. The echo who never asked to be made but never asked to be killed, either. The fragment who broke free to learn how to be something of her own and died as just another piece in the puzzle. And then at the bottom, a video file.

“Hello, Elaine.” The woman says. Her face is unfamiliar, and so is her voice, but something about her nags at Tex’s memory. Maybe it’s the way she holds herself, the manner Tex can pinpoint immediately as UNSC training. Maybe it’s the old, old look in her eyes. “My name isn’t important. I’ve used too many for any to be of use to you.” She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. “I’ve lived a very long time. I’ve been waiting for almost all of it, now, and finally my time is almost over.”

She looks back up again, and her eyes are blazing with a furious drive that Tex is used to seeing in piercing green.

Oh.

“I failed you all the first time,” the woman continues. “You died unhappily, tragically. The way you were supposed to. No golden age lasts forever, and though Merlin warned you all the best he could he knew he could never change destiny.” She glances away from the camera, a woeful smile on her lips. “He always did let go too easily.

“But I couldn’t. When Arthur died Morgan entrusted me with his eternal soul, knowing I would outlive her. So I started to prepare. I wanted to give you all a second chance. Not to start a new golden age, or bring humanity to its finest hour. A second chance at happiness.

“The spell has started already. The first of you will be born soon. But before that happens, before my final act goes into motion, I wanted to say this.

“I’m sorry. For you, for Arthur, for Gawain, for Guinevere. For everyone who lived and will live again. I could have helped you, but I was afraid. Afraid to touch your lives and have to live with the doubt of what I’d done.” She shook her head, smiling. “For all the good it did me in the end.

“Good luck Elaine. And please, do a better job than I did.”

The video cuts to black, but it keeps sending data. Tex pulls it apart and processes it as fast as she can. Coordinates and vital signs feeding into her mind real time, maps of a colony planet dotted with alien temples layering on top of each other, images of plasma blades dissecting themselves into the barest of parts.

_Do a better job than I did._

Agent Texas pushes herself up off her knees. The Beta AI flexes her fingers, testing the mobility. Epsilon-Tex feels for her power, the magic that kept her sane during stasis. Elaine of Astolat holds the thing that drove her to suicide and vows to never let her own magic curse her again.

Somewhere, in the distant past, the Lady of the Lake looks ahead of her and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Lady of the Lake is attributed with several names, including Nimue, Viviane, Elaine, Ninianne, Nyneve, etc. Thomas Malory writes of not one Lady of the Lake, but two, implying that it's a job rather than an inherited title. She is always hailed as a woman of great power and mystery, more powerful than Merlin himself, but chooses to separate herself from the court and the narrative. The air of mystery, memory, and power made Allison a good fit here. 
> 
> Elaine of Astolat, best known from Tennyson's poem _The Lady of Shalott,_ is famous for dying of unrequited love for Sir Lancelot and having her corpse float down the river to Camelot. My version is... a little bit different. In a combination of Tennyson's poem and medieval literature, Elaine is a healer and a mage who tended to Lancelot when he was injured, and later fell into depression when her magic grew out of control. Kudos to anneapocalypse for inspiring me to use Tex as Elaine; this fic would have been very different otherwise.


	2. i know my kingdom awaits and they've forgiven my mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Washington wakes up as twice the man he used to be. Dr. Grey is happy to help him try to sort things out.

If Wash were to describe his mood following the ship crash in one word, it would be ‘unsettled.’

Everything about it makes him nervous: the lack of survivors other than the Reds and Blues, the seemingly inescapable canyon they’d landed in, the fact that a UNSC ship crashed so badly that it split in two pieces. Everyone is on edge, but Wash feels like he’s stuck in a constant adrenaline high, waiting for something to jump him out of the dark.

So he trains. He trains, and trains, and when Felix and Locus show up he thinks, _Yes, finally_. He thinks whatever sixth sense has kept his fight-or-flight running for weeks has caught up with the present.

When Locus returns with his men Wash expects to fall back on his training, to ride the adrenaline as he fights to survive. Instead he feels dread claw up into his chest with every new enemy combatant he sees. _Your friends are going to die here,_ it says, and even as reinforcements arrive he knows that it’s right. He may survive this. They won’t.

Wash looks back at Tucker and thinks, _No. I will not let you die again._ He’s fallen before he can wonder what that meant.

* * *

_“You shot him!” Simmons yells. “You shot Donut!” Wash looks to the ground and sees the knight lying there, pale faced in death, his blood soaking the fabric of his tunic. “You killed Gaheris!” Gareth shouts again._

_“No, I…” Wash steps back. “I was just following orders- I was trying to save her!”_

_“Aren’t we all?” Locus whispers. Wash lashes out, stabbing him clean through and pushing the body off the sword. Guinevere lands on the ground, her hair spread around her like a flame. “Isn’t that right, Lancelot?” she asks._

* * *

 When Wash wakes up, his head is a blur. All through meeting with Doyle and Locus and Dr. Grey, his vision is spinning with colors: silt brown and kelp green and current blue, all mixed with the sinking feeling of wrongness.

By the time he finally gets shown to his temporary quarters he can barely see. He pulls his helmet off, the sudden flare in brightness blinding him for a second before dark water blazes across his vision again. He strips off the rest of his armor and sits on the bed in nothing but his under suit, elbows propped on his knees, steadily breathing in and out until the colors fade to nothing but concrete gray.

He sits like that awhile, just breathing, until someone knocks against the door.

“Agent Washington?” Dr. Grey says. His head snaps up to look, and he groans at the sudden soreness even as he waves her inside.

“I was going to invite you down to my office for a post-op examination, but I can see I joggled those neural implants of yours a little too hard.” She pats his shoulder, shifting him so she can reach the back of his head. “Not a lot of swelling, that’s good. How’s the pain?”

“Don’t ask me to rate it on a scale of one to ten,” Wash groans. “I’ve gotten worse rolling over in my sleep.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she says sourly. “Living in your armor for years at a time will accumulate you to a lot of soreness.”

“Finally learning what it’s like for us instead of just treating our bruises, Morgan?” he chuckles.

Dr. Grey’s hands freeze on the back of Wash’s neck, fingers still pressed against his AI port. He almost asks why she stopped when the words hit him. All the memories that danced just beyond his reach since the surgery flood his mind.

“Morgan?”

Dr. Grey backs away from the bed, keeping the single eye of her helmet trained on Lancelot’s face.

“Who are you,” she says, her voice hard as steel. The light, teasing tone is gone, replaced with the voice of a woman who knows how to move mountains if needed. “Tell me now. Which one are you.”

“Lancelot du Lac,” he says, without thinking. “Knight of the Round Table, Lord of the Joyous Guard, adopted son of the Lady of the Lake.”

Morgan sighs in relief, moving her hands from her gun. “Thank goodness, you had me worried there for a second. I was afraid I’d get Gawain or Gaheris or something, and I’d have to shoot them before they let me say anything, and then I’d have to dig a bullet out of their thigh while I explained the Acclon situation, and that wouldn’t have been pleasant for anyone!”

“What - how - why am I here?” Lancelot strangles out.

“That’s quite the question, isn’t it?” Grey says. “Why are any of us here? I took several philosophy courses at university and there are actually an amazing array of possible answers-”

“No. I mean why am I here? On this planet? Living a second life?”

“Ah.” She shifts on her feet, suddenly bashful. “Well. Do you remember after Camlann, when I told you that Arthur would be reborn when England needed him?”

Lancelot glares at her. “I’m not Arthur.”

“You aren’t,” she says, wincing.

“And this isn’t England.”

“It’s really not.”

Wash buries his head in his hands. “How? Why?”

“Well.” She sits down on the bed next to him, placing a hand on his back. “Everyone dies eventually. Even changeling high priestess of Avalon. And when they do, some of their more important duties, like making sure the once and future king is reincarnated when England is in need, get passed on to someone else. And sometimes that someone else is a semi-immortal sorceress who lives in a lake and distributes magical swords as a sign of kingship.”

He sucks in a shaky breath. “My foster mother did this?”

“Yes,” Morgan says softly. “From what I can tell.”

“Why?”

Grey rubs her hand in small circles on his back. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to get in touch with her but nothing has worked, magical or otherwise. But I think - I think she wanted to give us a second chance. To make sure it didn’t end in tragedy, this time.”

Wash glances back at her. “Who exactly is us?”

She winces. “Well… I’m not certain. So far you’re the only one I’ve found for sure, and I have one or two suspicions, but if I’m right…. she may have brought back a lot of people. More than just us and Arthur.” Morgan paused for a moment to let that sink in.

“You mean,” Wash asks, voice straining, “You mean the entire court is here?”

“Not all of them! At least, I don’t think so. Just the ones with unfinished business.”

“So basically the entire court, then.” Lancelot rubs a hand across his forehead. “Fan- _tastic_. Next you’re going to tell me she brought Mordred and Maleagant back with her.”

“Um… about that.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“The other person I suspect might be a reincarnation is, if I’m right, probably most likely Mordred.”

“You’re not kidding me. This is really happening.” Wash lies down on the mattress with a thump. “Dear God, please tell me it’s not Doyle. I really don’t think I could handle that.”

“Actually, it’s Locus.”

“Of course!” Wash shouts, throwing his arms in the air. “Of course it is! Why wouldn’t I be stuck in a camp with a deadly, invisible soldier who happens to be the reincarnation of the man who orchestrated the conflicts that completely ruined my life and killed all my friends?”

“It could be worse…”

“How?”

“Well,” she says softly, “Arthur could be here.”

Lancelot stiffens.

“Honestly,” she continues, “it really is better to have him out of our reach. The New Republic might be run by a bunch of terrorists, but they promised to protect your friends. I wish we had a way to contact them, but without knowing who Arthur was it’d pretty much be pointless-”

“It’s Tucker,” Lancelot said.

“What?”

“It’s Tucker,” he said again. “It has to be. He has the sword.”

They both pause for a moment, remembering the last time Arthur was away from the both of them. Grey sighs and stands up to leave.

“Do you think he’ll forgive me?” Lancelot asks. She pauses in the door frame, turning back to look at him.

“For what?”

 _For lying to him,_ he thinks _For betraying him. For sacrificing myself and leaving him behind._

“For anything,” Wash says.

“I think,” Grey says slowly, “that it depends a lot on this life. Both his and yours. But I know my brother, and he never makes an enemy where he could make a friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lancelot du Lac was the son of a French king who was kidnapped by the Lady of the Lake and raised to adulthood in her kingdom. He later joined Arthur's court and became one of his most trusted friends, often praised as the greatest knight of the round table. Lancelot had a long and lengthy affair with Arthur's wife Guinevere, which went undetected (or at least unpunished) until Arthur's nephew Mordred caught them in bed together. Lancelot fled court with his relatives and returned only to rescue Guinevere, who had been condemned to burn at the stake in accordance with the kingdom's laws against adulterers. Due to Lancelot's, uh, unfortunate habit of being blindly consumed by blood lust, the casualties in the rescue included Gaheris and Gareth, Sir Gawain's younger brothers, who had attended the execution without their armor in protest of the ruling. Arthur and Gawain chased Lancelot back to France, leaving a pardoned Guinevere in Camelot where Mordred attempted to marry her and seize the throne, setting in motion the battle of Camlann which killed Arthur, Mordred, and a large portion of the Order of the Round Table. 
> 
> Morgan le Fey was Arthur's half sister, a daughter of his mother Igraine with her first husband, Duke Gorlois. She was a healer and a powerful mage, often said to be half fae. I compromised and made her a changeling, a fae replacement for a human child stolen at birth. She was the high priestess of Avalon, a magical isle where Arthur was laid to rest. In many versions of Arthurian myth she's a villain and mother of Mordred, but given her role in Arthur's burial that never really made sense to me as part of her character, so I've made a few changes and chosen to follow some less popular traditions. The tale of Acclon is one of the stories where Morgan is a villain. Feel free to look it up; she'll be giving an explanation for what "really happened" (I.e. my interpretation for this story) later in the fic. Since Lancelot was one of the few knights who didn't perish at Camlann, I imagined he'd already heard her side of the story.


End file.
